If you have ever tried to lose weight, you were probably more interested in losing fat than lean tissue or water weight. You’ve heard all kinds of promises from people pitching the latest fad diet or the trendiest new workout program, guaranteeing it will burn more fat than the last diet or workout program you tried.
But if you understand the fundamentals of fat loss, you’re more likely to know what to believe and what not to fall for. So let’s start with basics, shall we?
How many calories are in a pound of fat?
You’ve probably heard it’s 3,500 calories.
That’s pretty accurate. A pound of body fat may contain anywhere from 3,436 to 3,752 calories.
What’s a calorie anyway?
Calories are the energy in food. They’re needed to fuel every process in the body from moving to digesting to sleeping.
You’ve probably heard of the 4 macronutrients too:
- Carbs
- Fat
- Protein
- and, yes Alcohol too
These macronutrients contain calories which your body can use either right away for what you’re doing now or, store them to use later.
They do not just disappear
Some calories are stored as glycogen (like carbs), but the most are stored as body fat.
What’s the deal with “calorie deficit?”
To lose weight, a calorie deficit must happen in some way. This means you need to use up more calories than you take in.
Remember, calories are burned all day long to keep your body alive, not just when you exercise.
Some diets will try to get you to eat 500 less calories a day than what you currently eat. Do this for a week and you would lose one pound of fat.
If you do this for a year, you would lose 52 pounds.
Simple right?
In reality it doesn’t actually work like this.
On the upside, it will work for while in the beginning. But what this equation misses is what happens in the long run, which is why most people give up.
What is not accounted for is the body’s change in composition and metabolism as the scale drops.
When you reduce calorie intake for long enough, you body responds by burning fewer calories. It’s simply trying to conserve energy. Remember, calories are energy.
Also, unless you’re on a specific diet and workout program designed to build or maintain muscle, you will also lose muscle along with fat.
Your body is thinking….
“Yikes, we might be in a famine, I don’t know how long it will last, so I need to conserve body fat to protect myself.”
The loss of muscle mass further reduces the amount of calories your body will burn since muscle requires more energy to stay “alive” than fat does.
This is commonly known as going into “starvation mode,“or technically termed as “adaptive thermogenesis”
In other words, weight loss is not a straight line, and it typically slows down over time.
This is why it’s a good idea, if you’re going about your weight loss journey on your own, to use an app like the Body Weight Planner from the NIH that accounts for how diet and exercise affect weight loss. Or, if you use a calorie and macro counting app, be sure to update your current weight and weight loss goals regularly.
Remember that not all weight loss is fat loss.
If you’re trying to lose weight, I’m going to assume you are actually interested losing fat weight. The downside of dieting can unfortunately be muscle loss as I mentioned above.
This is a double whammy if you’re at the age where muscle loss happens anyway. Sarcopenia – age related muscle loss – starts somewhere around 30-ish. According to research, muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of 30 and this rate of decline is even higher after the age of 60. If you don’t do regular strength training, you can expect to lose 4 to 6 pounds of muscle per decade.
But the good news is you can definitely do something about it.
- Lift weights in a meaningful way. The whole body needs resistance training, not just your “mirror muscles” (the ones you only see in the mirror). When I say “meaningful,” I’m referring to this and also the intensity. If you’re lifting weights but your heart rate is not going up, and you’re not feeling any fatigue in the muscle, you may not get the benefits you want.
- Up your protein intake. High protein diets help you maintain and even build more muscle so you don’t break muscles to use for energy. A high protein diet means approximately 25% or more of your daily calories will be protein.
You need to do both of these to prevent your body from burning less calories as the scale drops.
If you’re not sure how to put it all together, it’s always a good idea to work with a professional. Not everyone will benefit from a high protein diet. And, without some guidance, weight lifting can also cause injuries.
Trading fat for muscle is possible at any age. There are many ways to design a custom program that will work for you so you can be successful while also taking it at your own pace. Questions or comments? Feel free to message me privately or below.